Twenty courses, served one hand at a time.
There is no menu to choose from. You take one of fourteen seats at a single slab of hinoki cypress, and for the next two hours the chef builds the evening in front of you, one piece at a time. Fish is cut to order, rice is warm, and each course is placed by hand and eaten within seconds. What you eat is whatever the Toyosu market released that morning, so no two evenings are ever the same.
Arrive
A cup of genmaicha and the first cut, before you have taken off your coat.
The progression
Lean to fatty, cold to warm, the room following the chef's hands in near silence.
Tamago
The custard-set egg that closes every seating, a signature we have never changed.
Tonight's counter
The market writes the menu. This is one recent evening, start to finish.
Hirame
Fluke aged three days, brushed with nikiri, a whisper of yuzu kosho.
Akami zuke
Lean bluefin marinated in soy and sake, warm rice, wasabi grated to order.
Kohada
Gizzard shad cured in salt and rice vinegar, the test of any counter.
Chutoro
Medium-fatty tuna from the belly, seared for a breath over binchotan.
Uni
Hokkaido sea urchin over warm rice, wrapped in a band of nori toasted at the counter.
Anago
Simmered sea eel that falls apart under the chopsticks, tsume glaze, a grain of salt.
Tamago
Our custard-set egg, sweet and dense, cut warm to close the evening.
Twenty years to make a plate look effortless.
Chef Kenji Aoki spent eleven years in Ginza before opening Hachi, the first five of them doing nothing but cooking rice. He sources from a single broker at Toyosu he has bought from for two decades, and he cures, ages, and cuts every piece himself. He does not take substitutions and he does not rush. He would rather serve fourteen people perfectly than forty people well.
Kenji Aoki
Chef and owner
Take a seat at the counter
$220 Per guest, tax and service included
Reserve
reserve@hachi.exampleCall
+1 415 555 0148Counter
22 Belden Place, San Francisco
Hours
Tuesday to Saturday · Seatings at 6 and 8:30